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A wealth of experience

April 26--WELLSVILLE -- The old building at 20 Madison Street has some new tenants.

Gildner and Associates Wealth Management recently marked three months in business since opening in mid-January. The operation is led by Kevin Gildner, a former fixture at Community Bank for 20 years.

Gildner, who served as VP at Community, said the time was right to open up his own practice.

"It was a lot of things," Gildner said. "I always wanted to have my own shop where I could be in control of my own destiny and be my own boss."

Even better, some of his team made the leap with him up the street to the new endeavor. That included longtime assistant Tracy Stephens and Shawn Derrick, who Gildner worked with for the last several years. Although he's committed to at least the next five years, Gildner has tabbed Derrick to eventually take over at the new shop as he begins to approach retirement.

"I wanted a situation where I could turn my clients over with a succession plan, where I knew who my clients were going to be doing business with," Gildner explained. "I'm not getting any younger, I want to start slowing down and retire at some point. When we made the switch we signed a five-year contract, so we're committed to being in play for another five years. What it really afforded me was a way to do the succession plan and have control over it."

Gildner said he'd just dealt with a client who brought in a statement from 1991, the business relationship spanning nearly three decades. Gildner said he's striving for that hometown feel at the new location, which offers financial planning for retirement, college, long-term care and estate planning, as well as an ability to deal in stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

"It's important to me that I know those people are going to be handed off to Shawn, who I trust implicitly," Gildner said. "He's going to take care of them. Before, Shawn and I couldn't work together. When he was on the road, I was parked. When I was on the road he was parked. Now we can work together and make the transition, which is really what the goal all along was."

The team has added Brenda Fives to the staff at 20 Madison Street, which is owned by Jim Raptis. The exterior of the former EB Curtis Hardware and Stoves building had been updated after being struck by a vehicle in a 2016 accident. Gildner renovated the interior after a visit indicated it was the perfect place to call home.

"I walked through it and I could kind of visualize how it turned out that first day," Gildner said. "We had to totally rehab it. It was in rough shape."

Gildner and Associates Wealth Management plans to host some seminars on topics like social security, medicare planning, estate planning and retirement planning.

With 30 years in the business, Gildner has witnessed plenty of changes in the industry.

"It's changed a lot. Technology has changed a lot," he said. "The expectations are a lot higher. It's still not cheap, you've still got to spend the money to be up to date on the technology. The firm that we ended up with, Commonwealth, has very good support. Now that we're through the thrust of just opening and getting up and running, we're going to be paperless, which will be nice for our clients and for us. They still get their statements a lot of the time.

"When I started in the business 30 years ago, I can remember the first laptop. It came in a suitcase with like four inches of foam all the way around it. Back then we did house calls. You'd show up with that thing and people would ask 'What, are you moving in?' Technology has changed dramatically, and like everything, the regulations have just gotten tighter and tighter. That's a big part of what we have to do, stay on top of the regulations. We're always trying to do the right thing for our clients. In my 30 years in the business, it's been a long road and the whole business is totally different now than where it was."

Gildner said the transition has been a smooth one.

"It's gone pretty well. We're kind of where we want to be," Gildner said. "I think our clients are getting settled in. It was a pretty big change to move, but we're appreciative of the support we've had. When the three of us decided to do this, I was probably the most skeptical of the three of us. It's very humbling when your clients come and follow you and stay with you. It was a humbling experience but a good experience to have that many clients stick with us."